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Speaker 1: On this episode of News World. How did mammals survive

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Speaker 1: the massive asteroid strike sixty six million years ago that

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Speaker 1: led to the extinction of the dinosaurs? How have scientists

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Speaker 1: pieced together the tale of mammals using fossil clues in DNA.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is quote one of the stars of

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Speaker 1: modern paleontology according to National Geographic and has worked on

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Speaker 1: dig sites and in labs all around the world. He

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Speaker 1: is also the paleontology adviser to the new film Jurassic

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Speaker 1: World Dominion, which opened in theaters on Friday. In his

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Speaker 1: new book, Doctor Steve Brusatti vividly imagines lost worlds and

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Speaker 1: introduces us to a sweeping and revelatory new history of mammals,

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Speaker 1: drawing on cutting edge science and his own field work

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Speaker 1: to illuminate the lost story of the extraordinary family tree

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Speaker 1: that led to us. I'm a huge fan of his

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Speaker 1: and I've been reading his new book, The Rise and

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Speaker 1: Reign of the Mammals, so I'm very much looking forward

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Speaker 1: to our conversation today. I'm really pleased to welcome my guest,

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Speaker 1: doctor Stephen Brusatti, Chair of Paleontology and Evolution in the

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Speaker 1: School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Steve,

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Speaker 1: thank you for joining me again. Well, that's for speaking

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Speaker 1: my pleasure. We had a lot of fun talking dinosaurs

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Speaker 1: a few months ago, and I'm happy to be back

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Speaker 1: to talk mammals and maybe a little smattering of dinosaurs

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Speaker 1: with the film, but with the new book coming out,

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Speaker 1: I'm just very pleased that we were able to get

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Speaker 1: you a copy and that you enjoyed it enough to

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Speaker 1: have me back on for another chat. Let's start with

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Speaker 1: a most popular thing, which is the movie. What was

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Speaker 1: it like now to be an advisor on one of

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Speaker 1: the Jurassic Park films? It was surreal, That's probably the

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Speaker 1: best word. The original film came out in nineteen ninety

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Speaker 1: three and I was nine years old. I remember seeing

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Speaker 1: it in the cinema. Was with my dad and with

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Speaker 1: my brothers back home in Ottawa, Illinois, a little town

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Speaker 1: I'm from, and it just blew us away at that time.

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Speaker 1: The special effects were so far beyond anything in any film,

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Speaker 1: and those dinosaurs were so realistic, and it led my

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Speaker 1: brother to become obsessed with dinosaurs, and for me it

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Speaker 1: took a little while longer, but really living with my

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Speaker 1: brother every day his bedroom. You know, he made it

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Speaker 1: into a dinosaur museum. It was just he'd loved the

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Speaker 1: film so much, and over time that's what helped me

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Speaker 1: find that there was this future in paleontology. So in

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Speaker 1: many ways, I'm a paleontologist because of the film. And

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Speaker 1: then nearly thirty years later, to be able to work

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Speaker 1: on one of the sequels behind the scenes, advising on

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Speaker 1: the dinosaurs, trying to ensure that they're realistic, trying to

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Speaker 1: make sure that the director of the artists had the

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Speaker 1: most up to information. It was a lot of fun.

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Speaker 1: It was really cool to work with creative people who

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Speaker 1: in a very different industry, who are just very, very

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Speaker 1: good at what they do. And the film was out

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Speaker 1: go out and say it. I think it's a great blockbuster.

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Speaker 1: I think it's a great dinosaur And we've learned a

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Speaker 1: lot of things about dinosaurs since Jack Horner advised in

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Speaker 1: that very first film. I mean, well, the first film

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Speaker 1: was amazing, partly because of special affection, partly because most

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Speaker 1: people never thought about dinosaurs moving naturally. If you were

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Speaker 1: redoing that today, it would have some significant differences, including

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Speaker 1: I suspect coloration of the dinosaurs and feathers. Yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: we know now that a lot of dinosaurs had feathers.

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Speaker 1: We didn't know that back in nineteen ninety three. So

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Speaker 1: the first feathered dinosaur fossils were found in nineteen ninety six.

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Speaker 1: They were found in China, these very famous fossils that

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Speaker 1: were buried by volcanoes, so all the feathers were locked in.

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Speaker 1: So when ninety three was Steven Spielberg was making the

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Speaker 1: first Jurassic Park and when our mutual friend Jack Horner

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Speaker 1: was the science advisor, they didn't know dinosaurs had feathers.

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Speaker 1: They would have been laughed at it. They put feathers

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Speaker 1: on those dinosaurs, and then, by the bad luck of timing,

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Speaker 1: three years later those discoveries were made and we now

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Speaker 1: know that maybe not all dinosaurs, but a lot of

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Speaker 1: them did have feathers. Raptor dinosaurs definitely had feathers, even

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Speaker 1: had wings. So if the original was being made today,

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Speaker 1: surely it would have incorporated those things. But one of

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Speaker 1: the great things about the new film is that there

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Speaker 1: are feathers on some of the dinosaurs for the first

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Speaker 1: time really in the Jurassic franchise. And when I met

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Speaker 1: Colin Trevor the director. You read my dinosaur book, you

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Speaker 1: read The Rise of all the Dinosaurs, and he got

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Speaker 1: in touch and said, hey, I read your book. You know,

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Speaker 1: let's meet up talk dinosaurs and one thing, let do another.

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Speaker 1: But he told me right away when I first met him,

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Speaker 1: he said, I want to put feathers on some of

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Speaker 1: these dinosaurs finally, and I want you to help me

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Speaker 1: to do it. And I was honored to be asked.

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Speaker 1: And so there's a few dinosaurs in the film. There's

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Speaker 1: pyro Raptor, which is basically what a real velociraptor would

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Speaker 1: have looked like, covered in feathers, wings on his arms,

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Speaker 1: and then there's some other feather dinosaur. I do won't

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Speaker 1: give them all away. I don't want to give away

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Speaker 1: too many spoilers. The movies out, so go out and

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Speaker 1: see it. We will see feather dinosaurs, all right. We'll

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Speaker 1: gonna move beyond the movie. But it's interesting, you know,

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Speaker 1: I think the way most people think the world has worked.

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Speaker 1: You went from invertebruche to fish and amphibians, two reptiles

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Speaker 1: including dinosaurs, to eventually an age of mammals. But as

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Speaker 1: you point out in this book, and I must say,

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Speaker 1: some of the most fascinating parts of the book are

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Speaker 1: the early mammals. That mammals actually are very parallel to

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Speaker 1: the dinosaurs, and that mammals were hanging out in the

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Speaker 1: same time that we had what we call the Age

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Speaker 1: of the dinosaurs also had an amazing number of mammals

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Speaker 1: in it. And can you explain a little bit of that,

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Speaker 1: because it is fascinating, and I know how much harder

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Speaker 1: it is to find mammal fossils from that era because

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Speaker 1: they're small and you really have to look carefully. It's

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Speaker 1: very different than looking for dinosaurs. So talk just a

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Speaker 1: little bit about the pre dinosaur rise of mammals and

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Speaker 1: then their relationship during the Age of the dinosaurs. I

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Speaker 1: think there's a conception, and it's a misconception, that the

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Speaker 1: history of life proceeds in these nice, tidy packages, kind

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Speaker 1: of like in human history, we divide history into eras,

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Speaker 1: you know, based on the reign of monarch, arts or

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Speaker 1: who was present or whatever. But the real history is

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Speaker 1: a bit more complex than that, and the same thing

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Speaker 1: with the history of life. So I think there is

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Speaker 1: this conception that dinosaurs had their day, they died out,

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Speaker 1: and then mammals evolved to take over from the dinosaurs.

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Speaker 1: And it's certainly true that mammals replaced the dinosaurs as

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Speaker 1: big animals and top of the food chain animals, you know,

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Speaker 1: after the asteroid hit. But mammals and dinosaurs actually go

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Speaker 1: back to the same time. They both originated around two

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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five million years ago, back in the

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Speaker 1: Triassic period, back when all of the land was gathered

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Speaker 1: together as the supercontinent of Pangaea. So the origin story

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Speaker 1: of dinosaurs and mammals same time, same place, but they

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Speaker 1: had different fates. And dinosaurs they were destined for grandeur.

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Speaker 1: You know. Dinosaurs they became huge, some of them became

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Speaker 1: as big as jet planes, you know, and you had

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Speaker 1: t rex is the size of buses that could crush

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Speaker 1: the bones of their prey. All the hyperbole that comes

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Speaker 1: with dinosaurs. And because dinosaurs were so big and became

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Speaker 1: so big, they seize those niches in the ecosystem, so

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Speaker 1: there wasn't any space for mammals to become really big.

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Speaker 1: So instead, while the dinosaurs went big, the mammals went small.

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Speaker 1: They were relegated to the shadows, and for over one

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million years, mammals lived with dinosaurs, but

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Speaker 1: they never got bigger, as far as we know, than

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Speaker 1: a badger. But in those small sizes, mammals were remarkable,

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Speaker 1: and there were mammals that could run, mammals that could scurry,

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Speaker 1: mammals that could dig, that could climb, that could swim,

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Speaker 1: that could glide. Some of them evolved wings of skin

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Speaker 1: to glide between the trees. This was all happening when

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Speaker 1: they were living incognito, trying to survive in a world

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Speaker 1: dominated by dinosaurs. So really, the dinosaurs kept the mammals small,

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Speaker 1: but the mammals kept the dinosaurs big. You never saw

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Speaker 1: a t rex the size of a mouse or a

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Speaker 1: brontosaurus the size of a rat, and that's because mammals

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Speaker 1: were so good at living underground, in the undergrowth, living nocturnally,

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Speaker 1: living in the shadows at a time when the dinosaurs

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Speaker 1: were getting all the attention. One of the things that

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Speaker 1: you mentioned in passing mammals are warm blooded. But nowadays

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Speaker 1: I think increasingly we seem to think that dinosaurs may

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Speaker 1: have been warm blooded too, although more like birds and

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Speaker 1: not like mammals. That's probably true. There's a very exciting

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Speaker 1: study that came out a few weeks ago by some

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Speaker 1: colleagues of mind, some very ace young paleontologists. Jasmino Lemen

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Speaker 1: is the name of the lead author, as published in Nature,

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Speaker 1: and she and her team use very sophisticated techniques from geochemistry,

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Speaker 1: basically looking at the chemical elements and the bonds between

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Speaker 1: different elements preserved in the bones and teeth of dinosaurs.

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Speaker 1: And they've made this strong argument that you can tell

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Speaker 1: body temperature from these things, and that many dinosaurs were

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Speaker 1: warm blooded, just like us. But when it comes to

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Speaker 1: mammals being warm blooded, this is one of our superpowers. Really.

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Speaker 1: There's many things that mammals either have uniquely or things

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Speaker 1: like warm bloodedness, they're not unique to mammals, but they're very,

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Speaker 1: very very rare in the animal kingdom. And so what

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Speaker 1: makes a mammal and mammal is things like we have hair,

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Speaker 1: we feed our babies milk, we have big brains, we

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Speaker 1: have high intelligence, We have really keen senses of smell

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Speaker 1: and hearing. We don't have very good vision, by the way,

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Speaker 1: humans are pretty unusual among mammals and even being able

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Speaker 1: to see color, but the other senses are really strong.

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Speaker 1: And then of course mammals have all these different teeth.

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Speaker 1: You know, we have canines and incisors and premolars and

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Speaker 1: molars in our mouths. You look at the head of

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Speaker 1: a t rex, all the teeth kind of look the same.

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Speaker 1: So because we have all these different teeth, we can

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Speaker 1: grip and rip and chew food at the same time.

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Speaker 1: And we have very very just particular jaws and teeth

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Speaker 1: that can bite really strongly chew food really well. So

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Speaker 1: those are the kind of things that as a whole

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Speaker 1: make mammals mammals and make mammals different from other animals.

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Speaker 1: And almost all of those things we're evolving as mammals

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Speaker 1: or their ancestors. We're trying to survive in a world

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Speaker 1: dominated by other animals like dinosaurs. You make a point

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Speaker 1: which I've found fashionating, and I did not know two

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Speaker 1: i read your book. We found at least one mammal

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Speaker 1: which actually had baby dinosaurs and it's tummy. Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: isn't that something. It turns the classic story on its head.

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Speaker 1: You know, we think about the dinosaurs kept the mammals

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Speaker 1: in the shadows, and it's true they did, but there

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Speaker 1: was at least one dinosaur that would have feared mammals

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Speaker 1: because in the Cretaceous of China in the same rocks

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Speaker 1: where you find the feathered dinosaurs. These ecosystems buried by volcanoes,

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Speaker 1: kind of like Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius buried all the

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Speaker 1: humans and Pompeii, it's similar fossil preservation. And there's a

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Speaker 1: mammal there. It's called Repentamamus, that's its formal scientific name.

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Speaker 1: It's about the size of a wolverine or a badger,

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Speaker 1: and it was preserved and buried so quickly by this

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Speaker 1: volcano that the remnants of its last meal are still

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Speaker 1: fossilized in its stomach. And that last meal was a

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Speaker 1: baby dinosaur, so that mammal eight dinosaurs. One of the

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Speaker 1: things that comes through in the book that's I think

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Speaker 1: fashionating and almost worthy of a book on its own,

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Speaker 1: is the number of times that we have catastrophic events

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Speaker 1: that are actually caused by volcanoes. We all think about

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Speaker 1: the asteroid, which ended the age of the dinosaurs, but

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Speaker 1: there are a whole series going back well before the

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs of sudden, huge eruptions, sometimes covering hundreds of miles,

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Speaker 1: in which volcanoes are spewing out various gases that in

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Speaker 1: some cases become for example, sulfuric acid and wipe out

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Speaker 1: life in the ocean. Talk just very briefly about this

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Speaker 1: whole notion that you have these spasms of catastrophism, in

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Speaker 1: almost every case they were volcanic rather than asteroid. Yes,

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Speaker 1: this is a recurring theme in the history of life

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Speaker 1: that occasionally there are these mass extinctions where lots of

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Speaker 1: species die out all around the world very quickly because

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Speaker 1: of some common cause. And the asteroid that killed the

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs and a lot of other animals is one example.

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Speaker 1: But asteroids really are quite rare. What's more common are

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Speaker 1: these big volcanic eruptions. And there have been a few

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Speaker 1: times in Earth history where volcanoes have started to erupt

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Speaker 1: at scales that are just outside the bounds of anything

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Speaker 1: humans have ever witnessed. You know, we're not talking about

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Speaker 1: the Hawaiian volcanos releasing a little bit of lava. We're

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Speaker 1: not talking about Mount Saint Helens or Pinatubo exploding one day.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about giant canyons in the Earth just opening

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Speaker 1: up like somebody slashed the Earth with a giant machette,

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Speaker 1: and for hundreds of thousands of years, lava just gushing out,

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Speaker 1: and these kind of eruptions happened at the end of

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Speaker 1: the Permian period that's about two hundred and fifty million

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Speaker 1: years ago. And also at the end of the Triassic period,

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Speaker 1: that's when the supercontinent was breaking apart, and as it

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Speaker 1: split apart, these volcanoes erupted. That was about two hundred

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Speaker 1: million years ago. And both of those extinctions are things

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Speaker 1: that mammals or their ancestors, our ancestors had to endure.

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Speaker 1: We had ancestors that faced down those volcanoes and made

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Speaker 1: it through. And the reason they made it through was

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Speaker 1: that they were evolving some of these adaptations like hair

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Speaker 1: to warm and milk to feed their babies and so on.

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Speaker 1: Those turned out to be really, really useful things when

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Speaker 1: the world went to chaos, and what these volcanoes would

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Speaker 1: do basically they erupted for so long and so much

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Speaker 1: magma erupted, it would come up through the earth and

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Speaker 1: it would burn the earth. It's like when engine burning gasoline.

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Speaker 1: They would release a lot of carbon dioxide, a lot

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Speaker 1: of methane, a lot of the gases that can warm

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere. Then many instances in the past where temperatures

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Speaker 1: have gone up really quickly and the earth always has

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Speaker 1: to respond, it always has to endure, and it does

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Speaker 1: and sometimes things die. But thankfully our ancestors were able

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Speaker 1: to endure what those volcanoes did to the environment and

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Speaker 1: to the climate, and here we are. Wasn't there. In fact,

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Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, the perm me An extinction at

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Speaker 1: the end of the Permian just before the period which

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Speaker 1: becomes the Age of dinosaurs, may have been the highest

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Speaker 1: percentage of death ever, partly because it's so deeply affected

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Speaker 1: the ocean. Yes, maybe ninety five percent of species died

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Speaker 1: from the fossil record. We can make these estimates, and

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Speaker 1: the fossil record is far from perfect, you know, there's

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Speaker 1: lots of biases. Only certain things get preserved as fossils.

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Speaker 1: But from the best estimates, maybe ninety to ninety five percent,

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Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. The oceans were just hammered. It got

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Speaker 1: really hot, really fast, and that led to changes in

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Speaker 1: sea level, that sort of thing. But it also caused

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Speaker 1: the oceans to become very acidic. And it's an extreme analogy,

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Speaker 1: but it's like, you know, imagine bathing in vinegar. You

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Speaker 1: wouldn't do that. It didn't get that bad. But if

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Speaker 1: you increase the acid content of the oceans. That's just

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Speaker 1: not good for animals really for anything. So that was

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Speaker 1: a horrible moment of death. But out of that extinction

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Speaker 1: came some survivors, and those survivors then had a whole

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Speaker 1: new world to explore. And it was from those survivors

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Speaker 1: that both dinosaurs and mammals then evolved in the Triassic period.

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Speaker 1: So we owe our existence really to that extinction in

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Speaker 1: a strange, roundabout way. It's fascinating, and that you then

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Speaker 1: have a long period, you know, millions of years in

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Speaker 1: which the dinosaurs flourished, the mammals are there, things are evolving,

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Speaker 1: birds are evolving as a branch of dinosaurs. Turtles, for

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Speaker 1: some reason, just keep coming along. I guess turtles and

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Speaker 1: crocodiles were two of the most stable of all the

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Speaker 1: vertebrates in having found a way of life in a

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Speaker 1: body shape that really just seems to work. And I

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Speaker 1: think sometimes when we look back and we think about

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Speaker 1: some kind of ladder of success, we underestimate them because

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Speaker 1: they're so stable and they've been around so long. But

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Speaker 1: in fact it's really a compliment. Being a turtle turns

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Speaker 1: out to be a very survivable model. And for that matter,

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Speaker 1: so that's being a crocodile. You're absolutely right, and you

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Speaker 1: know what's fascinating, and you'll find this fascinating and you'll

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Speaker 1: have to join us sometime. Actually, I was just in

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Speaker 1: New Mexico just a little bit ago. Some Jurassic World

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Speaker 1: stuff in London and the stuff here in Los Angeles,

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Speaker 1: the surreal life of this small glimpse into the movie world.

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Speaker 1: But in between I went out to do field work

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Speaker 1: with my students and with my dear friend. Tom Williamson

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Speaker 1: is the curator in Albuquerque. And what we are always

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Speaker 1: trying to find in New Mexico are either fossils of

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Speaker 1: the last dinosaurs or fossils of the mammals that took over.

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Speaker 1: There's a great transitional fossil sequence across the mass extinction.

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Speaker 1: So we were out looking for mammals. We want to

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Speaker 1: find the mammals. You know. I've become so interested in mammals.

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Speaker 1: That's why i wrote The Rise in Rain of the Mammals,

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Speaker 1: why the new book is out. You know, it's fascinating,

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Speaker 1: it's our story. So I'm always looking for the jaws

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Speaker 1: and the teeth of mammals, but they're actually kind of

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Speaker 1: rare in the rocks that formed in the first two

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Speaker 1: or three hundred thousand years after the extinction. You find mammals,

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Speaker 1: but you know what, you find a lot more of

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Speaker 1: You find a lot more crocs, and you find a

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Speaker 1: lot more turtles. So we just the other day we're

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Speaker 1: just building a big plaster jacket. One of my students, Hans,

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Speaker 1: found a beautiful turtle, so we jacketed this up in

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Speaker 1: the plaster band just took it out. We found lots

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Speaker 1: of crocs. They were great survivors too, So it's not

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Speaker 1: only us as mammals that have been able to survive.

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Speaker 1: Other groups have done it. And as you say, being

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Speaker 1: a croc being a turtle, they have figured out ways

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Speaker 1: that just work and they're pretty stable inde qurse in

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Speaker 1: the case of crocodiles, I don't know about turtles, but

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Speaker 1: crocodilians can estivate and basically bury themselves in the mud,

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Speaker 1: slow down their entire heartbeat, and hang out for a

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Speaker 1: year or more without eating. And so that may be

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Speaker 1: part of what happened, is that they during the Great

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Speaker 1: Crisis of the asteroid, they found some way to just

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Speaker 1: let her pass over before they came back out to play. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think so. I think they in that scenario when suddenly,

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Speaker 1: just imagine, you know, one day, this asteroid falls out

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Speaker 1: of the sky. There was no real inclination if you

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Speaker 1: were a dinosaur, mammal or a turtle or whatever, that

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Speaker 1: this was going to happen. Just one day, boom, you know,

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Speaker 1: a six mile wide rock smashes into the earth. It

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Speaker 1: releases more energy than a billion nuclear bombs put together,

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Speaker 1: and it just unleashes instantaneously wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, and then

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere becomes superheated and glass bullets start raining down

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Speaker 1: from the sky of all the gunk from the asteroid,

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Speaker 1: and then all the smoke from the wildfires and other

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Speaker 1: stuff clogs the atmosphere, blocks out the sun. Plants can photosynthesize,

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Speaker 1: forest collapse. Plant eaters don't have food. Meat eaters don't

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Speaker 1: have food. The House of cards falls. I mean, that

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Speaker 1: is catastrophe. This was probably the single worst day in

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Speaker 1: the history of life when that asteroid hit, and then

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Speaker 1: the next ten years or so would have just been

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Speaker 1: complete bedlam. But if you're a croc or a turtle

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Speaker 1: and you can hunker down, you're cold blooded, you don't

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Speaker 1: need to eat a lot. You can bury yourself in

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Speaker 1: the mud. You don't have to eat plants, you can

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Speaker 1: eat detritus, you can eat the stuff that kind of

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Speaker 1: decaying organic stuff in the rivers and the lakes. That's

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Speaker 1: a great hand of cards to have when catastrophe hits.

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Speaker 1: When you look at the map of the Kachan Peninsula,

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Speaker 1: you think how big the asteroid was, and how big

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Speaker 1: the impact must have been, and the way it sort

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Speaker 1: of came across the whole planet. But as you got

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Speaker 1: further and further away from the impact point, it may

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Speaker 1: have had in fact somewhat less impact on life, which

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Speaker 1: gets you to things like the Andalartican South America. And

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Speaker 1: yet out of all of that, two of the survivors,

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Speaker 1: interestingly are mammals and birds. And it seems to me

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Speaker 1: that in the original period of the Paleocene and early

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Speaker 1: EO scene, the birds are actually making a pretty good run. Yes, yea.

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Speaker 1: So then asteroid hit, I mean it changed everything so quickly.

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Speaker 1: I mean, for over one hundred and fifty million years,

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs were filling so many roles in ecosystems. They were

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Speaker 1: the top predators, they were the top plant eaters, they

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Speaker 1: were the biggest animals, and then all of a sudden

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Speaker 1: they were gone. And so there was this vacuum, and

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Speaker 1: the surviving species rushed in to fill it. Now mammals

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Speaker 1: were spotted, and I tell the story and the rising

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Speaker 1: rain of the mammals. I used the field work we

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Speaker 1: do in New Mexico to illustrate it. How we're looking

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Speaker 1: in these rocks that formed within a few hundred thousand

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Speaker 1: years after the extinction, and all of a sudden, mammals

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Speaker 1: which never were bigger than a badger for the previous

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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty million years, all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: within one or two hundred thousand years, there as big

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Speaker 1: as pigs. Within a million years, two million years at most,

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Speaker 1: there as big as cows. So mammals they expanded in

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Speaker 1: body size, they ballooned in size to basically fill those

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Speaker 1: roles that t rex and triceratops once had. But so

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Speaker 1: did birds, the surviving dinosaurs. Not all dinosaurs died. Birds

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Speaker 1: came from dinosaurs. They're part of the dinosaur family. They

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Speaker 1: survived in Some birds kind of re established themselves, and

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Speaker 1: the Paleocene and the Eocene the intervals after the extinction,

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Speaker 1: and some of them became really big. He had these

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Speaker 1: birds that were like ten feet tall. They were the

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Speaker 1: top predators in many ecosystems. This was before mammals evolved

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Speaker 1: things like wolves and bears and tigers and lions and

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Speaker 1: these kind of things, so early on after the asteroid,

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Speaker 1: for a while in many places, it really was the

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Speaker 1: birds that were at the top of food chain. And

395
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Speaker 1: that's another interesting story that I don't think is told

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Speaker 1: as often as it should be. You have competition underway,

397
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Speaker 1: mammals really evolving and filling the niches. One of the

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Speaker 1: rules of life seems to be that life will continue

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Speaker 1: to evolve to fill every niche that it can possibly

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Speaker 1: get to, and does so. As you know with extremophiles,

401
00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:23,160
Speaker 1: for example, they can live in software, they can live

402
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Speaker 1: in extraordinary heat. I mean, it's amazing how life adapts.

403
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Speaker 1: It is. Life is very adaptable, Life is very diverse.

404
00:21:30,800 --> 00:21:34,160
Speaker 1: Life has been changing for such a long time. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you never say never when you're talking about

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Speaker 1: living things. You never say anything's impossible, because life seems

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Speaker 1: to have done at all. And I think when it

408
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Speaker 1: comes to surviving these extinctions, that's where it really shows.

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Speaker 1: Because these events, the big asteroids of volcanic eruptions. These

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Speaker 1: were so catastrophic it's shocking to me that anything could survive,

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Speaker 1: but many different living things did. But then, after you know,

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Speaker 1: about eleven million years of evolution, in this new post

413
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Speaker 1: Donosho world, you have what's called the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum,

414
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Speaker 1: when the Earth may have gotten as hot as it

415
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Speaker 1: has ever been since the origin of life. Why didn't

416
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Speaker 1: you suddenly get this sudden warming. Yeah, this was about

417
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Speaker 1: fifty six million years ago. It was ten million years

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Speaker 1: after the asteroid, and this is the quintessential global warming

419
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Speaker 1: spike in the fossil record, and things got really hot.

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Speaker 1: The temperatures went up by several degrees within a few

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Speaker 1: tens of thousands of years. What happened was, again it

422
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Speaker 1: was volcanoes. Because volcanoes release a lot of carbon dioxide

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Speaker 1: and methane. They release a lot of these greenhouse gases.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's not only automobiles that people drive, you know,

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Speaker 1: that release these gases. Nature releases a lot of them too.

426
00:22:45,400 --> 00:22:49,240
Speaker 1: And at this what we called the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum,

427
00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:51,679
Speaker 1: it's just the fancy name for this big heat spike.

428
00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:54,400
Speaker 1: There was a hot spot when the Earth's mantle. It's

429
00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:57,160
Speaker 1: the layer under the crust. And basically a hot spot

430
00:22:57,240 --> 00:22:59,040
Speaker 1: is just, for some reason, a lot of energy gets

431
00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:01,680
Speaker 1: concentrated and so it leads to a lot of melting

432
00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:05,680
Speaker 1: of magma. And that hot spot it parked itself under

433
00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 1: the North Atlantic and as this hot spot erupted all

434
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:13,800
Speaker 1: this magma, it actually separated North America, Greenland, and Europe.

435
00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:16,240
Speaker 1: Up until that point there were still land bridges. Those

436
00:23:16,600 --> 00:23:19,560
Speaker 1: places were all connected u from the Arctic Circle. As

437
00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:23,680
Speaker 1: all that magma came up through the crust, it baked

438
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:25,879
Speaker 1: the crust of the Earth. It burned the crust of

439
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:29,640
Speaker 1: the Earth, and that released a lot of carbon dioxide

440
00:23:29,680 --> 00:23:31,680
Speaker 1: and a lot of methane and did it very very quickly.

441
00:23:32,440 --> 00:23:36,040
Speaker 1: That hot spot today is still active. Now. The energy

442
00:23:36,119 --> 00:23:38,679
Speaker 1: level decreased, you know, it was really active for a

443
00:23:38,720 --> 00:23:41,520
Speaker 1: while and then it kind of went into a slow decline.

444
00:23:41,520 --> 00:23:44,320
Speaker 1: But that hot spot is still there today. It still

445
00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:47,560
Speaker 1: is producing magma. There are still volcanoes erupting, and that

446
00:23:47,600 --> 00:23:50,240
Speaker 1: hot spot is what we call Iceland, so the whole

447
00:23:50,320 --> 00:23:53,400
Speaker 1: island of ice on those volcanoes. Sometimes they cancel air flights,

448
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:55,320
Speaker 1: you know, you see him on the news. That's the

449
00:23:55,359 --> 00:23:59,800
Speaker 1: same system of volcanoes that caused all that Gillibal warming

450
00:24:00,280 --> 00:24:03,680
Speaker 1: six million years ago, and that just shows how there's

451
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:06,800
Speaker 1: a lot we can learn from that event fifty six

452
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:09,600
Speaker 1: million years ago, because yes, right now temperatures are changing.

453
00:24:09,920 --> 00:24:12,960
Speaker 1: So we want to understand these things have all happened before,

454
00:24:13,080 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: you know, nothing was happening. Now the Earth has gone

455
00:24:15,880 --> 00:24:17,520
Speaker 1: through it all. So we want to look to the

456
00:24:17,560 --> 00:24:20,199
Speaker 1: fossils and look to the geology to see what the

457
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:22,080
Speaker 1: Earth has done in the past. And this one has

458
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:24,280
Speaker 1: a lot of lessons for us. So the people who

459
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 1: talk about the gigantic supervolcano under Yellowstone are technically right,

460
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:32,960
Speaker 1: even though it's not probably a concern for our generation.

461
00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:35,520
Speaker 1: Yes they are right that one is still active. And

462
00:24:35,560 --> 00:24:37,920
Speaker 1: in the Rising Reign of the Mammal's book, I tell

463
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 1: a story later on about we're getting a bit of

464
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:42,639
Speaker 1: ahead of ourselves. But there's in Nebraska a very famous

465
00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:45,760
Speaker 1: fossil site called the Ashfall Fossil Beds, and this is

466
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:50,040
Speaker 1: formed about twelve million years ago, when North America was

467
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:53,760
Speaker 1: a big savannah. You could have gone on safari in Nebraska.

468
00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:58,240
Speaker 1: Back then there were camels, there were horses, there were elephants,

469
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:01,280
Speaker 1: there were rhinos, and these things were buried a bunch

470
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:04,760
Speaker 1: of them by a mega volcanic eruption that erupted so

471
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:08,160
Speaker 1: much ash that this ash fell like snow over much

472
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:12,720
Speaker 1: of North America. And that volcanic system was the Yellowstone Volcano.

473
00:25:12,760 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 1: It was much more active back then than it is now.

474
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 1: But the Yellowstone system, now, that's why there's old Faithful

475
00:25:18,359 --> 00:25:20,439
Speaker 1: and in the geysers, that's where the heat's coming from.

476
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:23,439
Speaker 1: Back then it was much more catastrophic. So hopefully it

477
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:46,439
Speaker 1: doesn't return to the bad phase. I have to ask you.

478
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:48,800
Speaker 1: One of the things that doesn't show up a lot

479
00:25:48,800 --> 00:25:52,240
Speaker 1: in the book, but this absolutely fascinates me, is the

480
00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:55,880
Speaker 1: rise of bats. I think people have almost no idea

481
00:25:56,119 --> 00:26:01,400
Speaker 1: how successful bats are. They're extreme mammals and they're sublime mammals.

482
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 1: And I have a section in the book all about bats.

483
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:05,920
Speaker 1: I have a chapter called extreme Mammals, and it talks

484
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:09,639
Speaker 1: about elephants, whales, and bats, which to me are just

485
00:26:09,800 --> 00:26:12,359
Speaker 1: all incredible. But bats, when you think about it, first

486
00:26:12,359 --> 00:26:15,520
Speaker 1: of all, somewhere around like half of all mammals today

487
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:17,399
Speaker 1: are bats. I don't have the exact number off the

488
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:20,199
Speaker 1: top of my head, but bats are so diverse we

489
00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:22,400
Speaker 1: just don't recognize it because a lot of them are

490
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 1: nocturnal and they're small, and maybe you see them flying

491
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:28,200
Speaker 1: around and you just think it's a bird. But there

492
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 1: are tons of bats and they live all over the world.

493
00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:34,560
Speaker 1: I think they're actually over four thousand species. It's crazy,

494
00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: isn't I mean, it is remarkable, and they live everywhere.

495
00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: They were the first group of mammals to spread all

496
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:43,359
Speaker 1: around the world because they could fly. And that's spectacular

497
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 1: because think about it, how many animals can really fly?

498
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 1: Not that many, And for vertebrates animals with bones, only

499
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 1: three times in the history of life have they evolved flight.

500
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 1: There's birds, there's the terodactyls or the pterosaurs that lived

501
00:26:56,600 --> 00:26:58,879
Speaker 1: with the dinosaurs, and then bats, so they're one of

502
00:26:59,040 --> 00:27:02,679
Speaker 1: three times in history an animal with bones develop the

503
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:06,880
Speaker 1: ability to fly, and they live everywhere. They have a

504
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:10,240
Speaker 1: wide range of diets, of ecology, of behavior. There are

505
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:13,360
Speaker 1: truly real vampire bats. I mean these things are real.

506
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:17,440
Speaker 1: They do drink the blood of cattle and sometimes even humans.

507
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:20,959
Speaker 1: They live today with us, and we have fossil bats.

508
00:27:21,040 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 1: We have bats that are fifty five fifty six million

509
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:28,600
Speaker 1: years old preserved in places like Wyoming, And there's also

510
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:30,640
Speaker 1: a very famous fossil site in Germany that I talked

511
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:33,359
Speaker 1: about in the book called the Messil fossil beds. They're

512
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:37,399
Speaker 1: full of bats and they're primitive bats, they're extinct bats,

513
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:41,280
Speaker 1: but they make the most exquisite, beautiful fossils. Do you

514
00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:44,880
Speaker 1: think that bats he existed before the asteroid or are

515
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:47,560
Speaker 1: they part of that initial dispersion. See, this is a

516
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:50,159
Speaker 1: big debate with my kind of researcher hat on with

517
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:52,440
Speaker 1: a big project that I'm doing in my lab now

518
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 1: with a lot of my students and colleagueses. We're building

519
00:27:54,880 --> 00:27:58,160
Speaker 1: a big family tree of mammals, of all mammals living

520
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:01,280
Speaker 1: in extinct because we want to understand where the extinct

521
00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:04,960
Speaker 1: species slot in, what they're related to, and that will

522
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: help us understand how the extinction worked when the asteroid hit,

523
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:11,560
Speaker 1: what happened, what mammals died, which ones lived, how quickly

524
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:15,200
Speaker 1: did they recover, how did our modern world become established there.

525
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 1: So one of the big debates, one of the reasons

526
00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:20,200
Speaker 1: why we're doing this is because there's a huge debate

527
00:28:20,240 --> 00:28:24,920
Speaker 1: about whether a lot of today's mammal groups like bats

528
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:29,200
Speaker 1: and rodents and primates, whether they actually were there before

529
00:28:29,320 --> 00:28:33,640
Speaker 1: the asteroid hit and they survived, versus whether they all

530
00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:36,680
Speaker 1: evolved after the asteroid. And it sounds kind of like

531
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:39,400
Speaker 1: an academic debate, it turns out to be really important

532
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 1: because it would mean a very different thing. If you

533
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:44,640
Speaker 1: had all these groups of mammals there before the asteroid

534
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,120
Speaker 1: and they all made it through the catastrophe. That would

535
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 1: really speak to the resiliency of mammals. We've never found

536
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: a fossil of a bat or a primate or any

537
00:28:54,560 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 1: kind of modern mammal in Cretaceous rocks from before the asteroid. However,

538
00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: if you look at the DNA of modern day mammals

539
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: and you build family trees and you see how similar

540
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 1: and different the DNA is, you would predict that the

541
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 1: common ancestors of lots of today's species were there back

542
00:29:13,040 --> 00:29:16,040
Speaker 1: in the Cretaceous. It's called a molecular clock. You can

543
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:20,640
Speaker 1: use DNA to predict when species originated. So right now,

544
00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 1: there's a mismatch between what the genetics suggest, which is

545
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 1: that there were some modern mammal groups they're living with

546
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:31,280
Speaker 1: the dinosaurs that survived the extinction, versus what the fossils show,

547
00:29:31,320 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: and that is that we've never found any of these things.

548
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: So it's a good question. There's no clear answer right now.

549
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: It's one of the most exciting debates among mammal researchers.

550
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:41,080
Speaker 1: We hope that the research that we're doing will help,

551
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 1: maybe not settle this debate, but at least give some

552
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 1: new insight into it. You know. I have to say,

553
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: by the way, one of the things I really liked

554
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:50,000
Speaker 1: about this book was the degree to which you would

555
00:29:50,040 --> 00:29:55,160
Speaker 1: reference current researchers, current paleontologists, people around the world, who

556
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:57,960
Speaker 1: you obviously admire and have great affection for. But I

557
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: think it gave it a sense of putting us in

558
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 1: human contact with the folks who are out there in

559
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: the museums and in the field doing the work that

560
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:08,920
Speaker 1: you're describing. Really, that's one of the parts of the

561
00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 1: book I found most compelling. Well, I'm glad you say that,

562
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:13,720
Speaker 1: because I did the same with the Dinosaur Book, and

563
00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:15,600
Speaker 1: some readers liked it. And you know, if you look

564
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 1: at the one star reviews on Amazon, which authors should

565
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:20,160
Speaker 1: never do. I'm sure you never get anyone stars, but

566
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 1: you look at those, none that I know of I'm

567
00:30:22,240 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 1: protected from. Some of the people say, oh, there's too

568
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: many stories about people. Just give me the dinosaurs and

569
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:30,360
Speaker 1: you know, look, I understand that. I mean, that's what

570
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: some people want. But for me, science is a process.

571
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: It's a way of learning, it's a way of understanding.

572
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 1: It's a way of thinking, and it's done by humans,

573
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:43,400
Speaker 1: and it's done by interesting humans. And these humans make discoveries,

574
00:30:43,440 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 1: they have insights, and I want to try to show

575
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:48,520
Speaker 1: that in these books, and in the Mammal book, you know,

576
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:50,480
Speaker 1: I want to show how do we find fossil mammals?

577
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: What is it like to go out and look for fossils.

578
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: What's the reality of that. It's not just glory all

579
00:30:56,640 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: the time. I'm like, Oh, we go out the desert,

580
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: we find a new fossil. No, there's lots of time

581
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:02,960
Speaker 1: you don't find anything. Oh, the students usually find the

582
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 1: best fossil. I tell the story of a young woman,

583
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 1: Charissa Raymond, who was on our field crew in twenty

584
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 1: fourteen in New Mexico. She was just a few days

585
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 1: out of her freshman year at University Nebraska, and she

586
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: did so well in her geology class that her professor

587
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: who we worked with, brought her out on his crew.

588
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 1: But she'd never taken a paleontology class. She'd never collected

589
00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 1: a fossil, and the first few days she was lost.

590
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:27,400
Speaker 1: She didn't know what she was looking for. But then

591
00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:31,040
Speaker 1: it started to click and she discovered a new speech.

592
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 1: She's a fossil mammal. This thing was the size of

593
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 1: a beaver. It was living about two hundred thousand years

594
00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 1: after the asteroid. It was one of the biggest mammals

595
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:40,800
Speaker 1: of the time. And this was found by I think

596
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 1: she was eighteen or nineteen at the time. So I

597
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 1: like to tell these stories so people can understand what

598
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 1: it's really like to study fossils and could be a scientist.

599
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 1: But I also want to celebrate the people that make

600
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: the discoveries. I want to give credit to my students

601
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: and my mentors and my colleagues and all the people

602
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: that have inspired me. Became interested in all of this

603
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: stuff when I was a teenager. It's just been a

604
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: big part of my life ever since. Fossils, fieldwork, paleontology,

605
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: so this is so intertwined with just who I am,

606
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:14,080
Speaker 1: and I wanted to try to celebrate that and convey

607
00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: the enthusiasm but also the reality of what it is

608
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:19,920
Speaker 1: to be a scientist. And I think, frankly, some young

609
00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:22,520
Speaker 1: people are going to read that and decide that could

610
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:25,440
Speaker 1: be them. I hope so, because I was just talking

611
00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 1: with Jack Horner this week as we were doing the

612
00:32:28,040 --> 00:32:31,280
Speaker 1: premier singer. Jack's retired now and he was the consultant

613
00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 1: on the original Jurassic Park series. And of course you

614
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 1: know Jack well, and he's an eminent paleontologist. He discovered

615
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 1: the first dinosaur nesting grounds. He just had an unparalleled career.

616
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 1: It's been very supportive of me over the years and

617
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 1: always has a kind word to say, and was very

618
00:32:45,360 --> 00:32:48,440
Speaker 1: happy for me to step into the Jurassic series. But

619
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 1: I remind him all the time when he tells me

620
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 1: congratulations on this or whatever. I say, it's because of you, Jack.

621
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: Because when I was fourteen fifteen years old and becoming

622
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,080
Speaker 1: interested in fossils and dinosaurs, I read Jack's books. He

623
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 1: wrote a great book called Digging Dinosaur Is another one

624
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 1: called Dinosaur Lives, And you know I read those books.

625
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 1: I read Bob Bocher's book Dinosaur Heresies. I read everything

626
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:10,360
Speaker 1: by Stephen J. Gould. You know, I read all this stuff,

627
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 1: and that's what, more than anything, made me want to

628
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 1: be a paleontologist. You know, more than even going to

629
00:33:16,840 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: the museums or seeing shows on TV was reading books.

630
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 1: I grew up in the middle of the cornfields and

631
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:23,560
Speaker 1: the bean fields a great place to grow up, but

632
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: like I didn't grow up in the desert or the mountains.

633
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:29,200
Speaker 1: Like books are what brought me to different worlds, different places.

634
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,560
Speaker 1: So it's touching to think that there might be young

635
00:33:32,640 --> 00:33:34,920
Speaker 1: people out there that will pick up the books I

636
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: write and get inspired in a similar way. The last

637
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: area we just have to cover, and you do something

638
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:44,520
Speaker 1: really interesting. You start with the very earliest currently known

639
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 1: primate or potential primate and bring us all the way

640
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: up to the way primates evolved until you get to

641
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 1: the great apes, of whom the most famous to us

642
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:59,240
Speaker 1: is us. But I like the way you start back

643
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,360
Speaker 1: very early and show how there's been the steady evolution

644
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 1: of both brain power and the way we function that

645
00:34:07,640 --> 00:34:10,880
Speaker 1: relates across all of the primates and then becomes a

646
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 1: particular subset among the great apes, who all of whom

647
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 1: are in many ways very similar. Yeah. So one of

648
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:19,239
Speaker 1: the things that I've thought about it I know how

649
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:21,479
Speaker 1: to bring humans into a book, like in The Rising

650
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:23,240
Speaker 1: Rain of mammals. I wanted to tell the whole story

651
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:26,759
Speaker 1: of mammal history. It's hundreds of millions of years, you know.

652
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:28,920
Speaker 1: I want to do it in a way that is

653
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 1: comprehensive but also doesn't get bogged down in too much detail.

654
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:36,640
Speaker 1: And unlike the dinosaurs, though, the biggest differences well, you know,

655
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:38,879
Speaker 1: we are a mammal, so I got to tell our

656
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 1: story and how we fit in. And so the way

657
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 1: I decided to do it was to really leave most

658
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:47,319
Speaker 1: everything about humans until the last chapter, which I think

659
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:49,759
Speaker 1: makes sense because we're such a new arrival. We've only

660
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:52,440
Speaker 1: been Homo sapiens is like two hundred or three hundred

661
00:34:52,480 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 1: thousand years old. That's it, you know. And even our

662
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 1: closest kind of hominin ancestors and relatives like Lucy, those

663
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:00,960
Speaker 1: kind of things, they're just a few million years old.

664
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:02,640
Speaker 1: So I saved it to the end, and in the

665
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: last chapter of the book, I basically tell the story

666
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: of primates. I start off with the story because the

667
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:11,279
Speaker 1: chapter before is about the ice Age and all about

668
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: wooly mammoths, and save are two tigers and giant ground

669
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:16,759
Speaker 1: slots and armadillo's the size of volkswagons, and wombats that

670
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:19,080
Speaker 1: weighed three tons, and beavers the size of humans, and

671
00:35:19,120 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 1: all these amazing megafauna. That's chapter nine, and then in

672
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:24,440
Speaker 1: chapter ten I talk about US. So I start off

673
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 1: with the story of some of our ancestors in Wisconsin

674
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:30,000
Speaker 1: hunting mammoths, and these are real fossil sites. There are

675
00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: places in Wisconsin where skeletons of mammoths have been found

676
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 1: with tools embedded into their bones from human hunters. And

677
00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: then I pull back from that story and say, all right,

678
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:41,480
Speaker 1: let's talk about the story of us. And I pull

679
00:35:41,520 --> 00:35:43,640
Speaker 1: back and start with the first primates. And the first

680
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:47,120
Speaker 1: primate fossils we have are these tiny little teeth. They

681
00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:50,960
Speaker 1: are microscopic. They're just a few millimeters long. You find

682
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:54,160
Speaker 1: the best of them in Montana, so a little species

683
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 1: called purgatorious. The animal would have been the size of

684
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:01,680
Speaker 1: like a really small monkey. But the guy who discovered

685
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:05,240
Speaker 1: and described these was a professor at the University of Chicago,

686
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 1: and that's where I did my undergrad and he was

687
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: retired by that point. His name is Lee van Valen.

688
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: He passed away about a decade ago, but he was

689
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:14,680
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting people I ever knew. He

690
00:36:14,719 --> 00:36:17,719
Speaker 1: would wander around the Hyde Park neighborhood on the south

691
00:36:17,719 --> 00:36:20,040
Speaker 1: side of Chicago, And I say it in the book,

692
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:22,240
Speaker 1: and there's no way around. He looked like a drifter.

693
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:24,680
Speaker 1: He had a long beard, he had a fishing hat on,

694
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 1: he had a big pocket protector, lots of pens in

695
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:29,680
Speaker 1: his pocket. He would write note cards all the time

696
00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:32,040
Speaker 1: with this tiny little text. But this guy was brilliant,

697
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:35,400
Speaker 1: and he discovered and described those fossils, and he recognized

698
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:39,200
Speaker 1: in these tiny microscopic teeth that they were taking the

699
00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 1: shape of the teeth of primates that have very particular

700
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 1: types of cusps and ridges, because a lot of primates

701
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:48,759
Speaker 1: eat fruit and that gives a certain shape to the teeth.

702
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:51,600
Speaker 1: But he was brilliant that he saw this and from there,

703
00:36:51,640 --> 00:36:53,759
Speaker 1: from these animals they were living one hundred thousand years

704
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:58,280
Speaker 1: after the asteroid. It was from these humble origins only

705
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:01,720
Speaker 1: recognized now by these tiny teeth, that the whole primate

706
00:37:01,800 --> 00:37:05,800
Speaker 1: dynasty would come eventually producing us. And we really are

707
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 1: just the very very very tip of the twig of

708
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: the end of the family tree. There used to be

709
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:15,759
Speaker 1: multiple species of other humans that were alive and up

710
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:18,920
Speaker 1: until now, up until about forty thousand years ago when

711
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: Neanderthals died, there were always multiple species of humans living together,

712
00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 1: sometimes maybe even like more than ten. So today's world,

713
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 1: where we have one species Homo sapiens, we were alone

714
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 1: left to ponder where we came from. And it wasn't

715
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 1: always that way. Well, and you point out that they

716
00:37:36,560 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 1: clearly enter bread because from the book he said East

717
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: Asian and Oceanian people have about zero point three to

718
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: five point six percent of their genes with the Denisovians,

719
00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:51,239
Speaker 1: who were the humans who had evolved in Asia. All

720
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 1: non African people including you and me, are somewhere between

721
00:37:55,719 --> 00:37:58,520
Speaker 1: one point five and two point eight percent Neanderthals. So

722
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:01,799
Speaker 1: clearly there had been in breeding. And interestingly, you can

723
00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 1: tell that the origins are in Africa because for humans

724
00:38:05,120 --> 00:38:08,440
Speaker 1: who stayed in Africa, they don't get either Neanderthal or

725
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:13,400
Speaker 1: Denisovian jeans, they just have purely Homo sapien jens. Yeah,

726
00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: the fossil record tells us that our ancestry comes from Africa,

727
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:20,600
Speaker 1: because there's lots of species of fossil extinct humans that

728
00:38:20,719 --> 00:38:22,359
Speaker 1: kind of build up the family tree, and they're only

729
00:38:22,360 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: known from Africa. But then you start to see some

730
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: humans appearing later in the fossil record in other places.

731
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:31,840
Speaker 1: And there were multiple waves of migration out of Africa,

732
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:35,360
Speaker 1: and the most recent wave was when our own species,

733
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,800
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens, came out of Africa, probably about two hundred

734
00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:42,680
Speaker 1: issh thousand years ago. But when our Homo sapien species

735
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:46,440
Speaker 1: first left Africa, they would have encountered other humans. They

736
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:49,799
Speaker 1: would have encountered Neanderthals in Europe, they would have encountered

737
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 1: these Denisova people in Asia, and they would have bred

738
00:38:54,719 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 1: with them because they were closely related enough, just like

739
00:38:57,239 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 1: you know, lions and tigers can breed in the wild,

740
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:03,360
Speaker 1: not always successfully, but it can happen. They're closely enough related,

741
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:06,160
Speaker 1: same with us and those other species of humans, and

742
00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:09,759
Speaker 1: so we carry the legacy of this in our genomes.

743
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:13,920
Speaker 1: You and I both have genes from Neanderthals, and the

744
00:39:13,960 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 1: only people really that don't are, as you say, the

745
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:19,920
Speaker 1: members of our species, almost Sapiens, that stayed in Africa.

746
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:23,279
Speaker 1: And it is amazing how the fossils and the genetics

747
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 1: come together to tell this story of human history and

748
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:30,839
Speaker 1: human migration. I find it fascinating. I'm not a geneticist.

749
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 1: This gets kind of to the limit of my knowledge.

750
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:36,280
Speaker 1: But there's some great books on genetics and some really

751
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:41,080
Speaker 1: amazing researchers that just constantly are just blowing my mind

752
00:39:41,160 --> 00:39:44,200
Speaker 1: with the stuff they're finding. People like Ellen are Scary

753
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:47,360
Speaker 1: and Tom Higgham. And Tom Higgam wrote a book recently

754
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:50,360
Speaker 1: about human history. There's a new book on the genetics

755
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:52,960
Speaker 1: of humans in the Americas that came out. I love

756
00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:54,799
Speaker 1: this stuff. I'm a real fan of when it comes

757
00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:57,680
Speaker 1: to the genetics because it's so far from what I know.

758
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:01,480
Speaker 1: But it's a fascinating story well, and I think in

759
00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 1: the closing section of book you communicate a good bit

760
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:07,279
Speaker 1: of that. I really want to thank you for joining me,

761
00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 1: particularly this week when you're also launching a mega movie worldwide.

762
00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:15,160
Speaker 1: I loved reading the new book, The Rising Rate of

763
00:40:15,160 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 1: the Mammals. I want to recommend it to everyone, as

764
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:20,480
Speaker 1: well as going back and getting the Dinosaur book. You

765
00:40:20,520 --> 00:40:23,760
Speaker 1: are a fascinating writer, You're a great scholar. I'm looking

766
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:27,279
Speaker 1: forward to seeing Jurassic World Dominion in theaters, and knowing

767
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:29,399
Speaker 1: you were part of it makes it, frankly even more fun.

768
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:32,440
Speaker 1: I think you are a worthy successor to Jack Horner,

769
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:35,279
Speaker 1: and I'm sure he's very proud of the work you're

770
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 1: now doing. Please keep in touch. I really look forward

771
00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:42,280
Speaker 1: to a future opportunity to have another podcast about whatever

772
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:46,000
Speaker 1: comes next in your life. Yes, we'll do another interview

773
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:48,359
Speaker 1: and you're always welcome to join us in Scotland if

774
00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:50,319
Speaker 1: you and your wife find yourself out and that part

775
00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:52,279
Speaker 1: of the world, come see our dinosaurs. And then for

776
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:55,640
Speaker 1: anybody listening, I'm pretty easy to find on social media,

777
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:57,759
Speaker 1: so get in touch. I love talking with people. I've

778
00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 1: chat with people. I love keeping just a broadspective and

779
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:03,520
Speaker 1: hearing from all kinds of people, learning new things, and

780
00:41:03,680 --> 00:41:05,799
Speaker 1: especially if anybody's read the books and they want to

781
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:08,719
Speaker 1: ask any questions or give any feedbacks. I'm pretty easy

782
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:11,319
Speaker 1: to find. The best way is on Twitter. That's at

783
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:17,839
Speaker 1: Steve Brusatti. Just my name, very easy to find. Thank

784
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 1: you to my guest doctor Steve Brusatti. You can get

785
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 1: a link to buy his new book The Rise and

786
00:41:23,080 --> 00:41:25,920
Speaker 1: Reign of the Mammals, a New History from the Shadow

787
00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 1: of Dinosaurs to us on our show page at Newtsworld

788
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:33,080
Speaker 1: dot com. News World is produced by Gingwish three sixty

789
00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:38,320
Speaker 1: and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnsey Sloan. Our producer

790
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: is Rebecca Howell and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The

791
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 1: artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special

792
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:49,879
Speaker 1: thanks to the team at Gingwish three sixty. If you've

793
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:52,440
Speaker 1: been enjoying news World, I hope you'll go to Apple

794
00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:55,960
Speaker 1: Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give

795
00:41:56,040 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 1: us a review so others can learn what it's all about.

796
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:02,080
Speaker 1: Right now, listeners of newt World can sign up from

797
00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:05,880
Speaker 1: my three free weekly columns at Gangwige three sixty dot

798
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:10,279
Speaker 1: com slash newsletter. I'm newt Gangwig. This is Newtworld.